Baby Makes Three
by Christine Morgan
Summary: Previously, on ER ... no, wait ... Previously, on Gargoyles ... (a sequel to Ever After). #21 in an ongoing saga


Baby Makes Three   
by Christine Morgan   
http://www.sabledrake.com   
christine@sabledrake.com 

* * *

  
Author's Note: the characters of Gargoyles are the property of Disney and   
are used here without their creators' knowledge or consent. The cast of ER   
(1997) belong to NBC and Michael Crighton.   
  
#21 in an ongoing Gargoyles fanfic saga 

* * *

  
_2032 A.D.  
Sunday, September 5, 8:35 AM._   
  
"Hey!" Carol yelled.  
Her voice cut through the bright chatter that filled the ER. It  
was one of those rare and wonderful mornings when there wasn't a  
patient in sight and five of the staff had brought donuts, so spirits were  
high.  
As one, they broke off and turned to look at her. She was  
listening to the paramedic comline with one ear and frantically waving  
at the television. "Turn it to Channel 8! A newscrew caught the triple  
trauma that's about to turn up on our doorstep."  
Randi, who was closest, sprang over and stretched way up to  
adjust the set, causing her crop-top to ride into the danger zone.  
"Are all the trauma rooms clear?" Carter asked needlessly.  
He'd sent the last one, a simple laceration, on his way more than an hour  
ago.  
"Clear and ready," Haleh replied. "Hoo, it's Teresa Marshall,  
the gore-crow of Channel 8."  
"Not much like her father, is she?" somebody murmured.  
"Aw, he had his sensationalistic period too, back during that  
big gargoyle scare of the nineties," Maggie said.  
"Shh!" Carol hissed. She was off the line with the paramedics  
now and peering intently at the screen. "Here it is!"  
"Terri Marshall? What a ghoul," was Mark's opinion as he  
wandered in. "What's up?"  
"Trauma headed our way," Carol said. "Vehicular, with some  
laser burns too. Oh, Jerry, better get somebody from O.B. down here.  
One of them is pregnant."  
"Gotcha." Jerry brushed chocolate sprinkles from his jowls  
and reached for the phone.  
On the screen, a bland view of the latest mayoral hopeful  
flapping his gums in front of a disinterested crowd suddenly shifted  
toward the source of yelling, the squealing of tires, the rumble of  
engines, and the *brr-zap!* of laser fire.  
" -- coming to you live!" Teresa Marshall was saying, her  
voice quavering with barely-contained excitement. "A peaceful Sunday  
morning erupts in senseless violence and tragedy, and Channel 8 Action  
News is bringing it to you right from courtside!"  
A black car, an antique and lovingly maintained gas-powered  
Mercedes, vintage 1980, came roaring down the street. Pedestrians  
scrambled and dove out of the way. Close on its tail was a hovervan,  
deep blue with darkly tinted windows. A turret mounted on the hood of  
the van seared bolt after bolt of vivid red energy. Some struck the  
fleeing car, but others blew up a mailbox, a newsstand, and stitched a  
smoking line down a storefront.  
The camera zoomed in for a tight close-up of a lady and two  
kids, standing horror-struck in the path of the speeding vehicles. At the  
last moment, the Mercedes veered sharply, sending up a shower of  
sparks as its undercarriage scraped along the curb. The car went briefly  
onto two wheels, missed the people by less than four feet, and slammed  
into the street again.  
The hovervan buffeted past, the thrust of its passage knocking  
the woman and kids sprawling. One heroic fellow jumped in and pulled  
them to the sidewalk, but by then they were out of danger.  
The Mercedes had a clear and open stretch of road. "That  
honey can easily leave an aircar in the dust," Haleh said, and agreement  
rippled through her co-workers.  
But it was not to be. A final laser blast turned the righthand  
tires into bubbling black slag and the car went into a crazy looping spin.  
The van kept on it and then rammed it hard enough to launch the  
Mercedes. It completed a weirdly graceful midair spin. The camera  
captured it so perfectly that the viewers at home could even read the  
license plate (IMMRTL2) as it whirled past.  
The car came down hard, the passenger-side door popping  
open. There was a brief glimpse of a woman within, and then the car  
tipped onto that side. The door was torn off in a black tangle of metal.  
Before anyone else could even move, the hovervan rammed  
the wreck again. Another shower of sparks kicked up as it skidded  
along the pavement and then tumbled onto its roof. Flames licked at the  
underside and the watchers all winced in anticipation of a Hollywood-  
style fireball.  
Instead, the drivers' side door was wrenched open and a man's  
arm poked out, holding a gun. The first shot blew a hole in the  
hovervan's air tank and sent it jetting in a clumsy circle.  
While the unseen occupants struggled for control, a man  
pulled himself from the battered Mercedes. Every move was clearly  
agonizing, but he steadied himself and aimed at the hovervan again.  
A second man, this one wearing a dark blue flightsuit and  
helmet, sprang from the crippled van with a gun of his own. Showdown  
time. The one in the flightsuit had a bigger and nastier gun, but the  
Action News camera didn't miss the absolutely deadly expression on the  
other's face.  
Just before they both would've opened fire, the wobbling  
hovervan crashed into a light pole, and this time there was a huge  
explosion.  
While everyone else was diving for cover, the cameraman  
(maybe with dreams of an award, more likely with Theresa Marshall's  
fingernails digging into his arm and threatening to rip off about a yard  
of skin if he dared move, while _she_ was dreaming of an award) kept  
his camera trained on the explosion. Which was how the viewers at  
home were treated to an extreme close-up of a scythelike chunk of firey  
metal coming straight at them, before the screen went to zigzags and  
then blackness.  
"Ho-lee shit," Jerry said. "Do you think he --"  
"Shh!" Carol said again.  
The scene shifted to the Action Newsroom, where the co-  
anchors looked rather dazed and blank. One of them twitched, looked  
into the camera, and visibly collected himself. "Um ... that was Terri  
Marshall, on the scene. We're told ... am I right, Denise? ... that the  
explosion you just saw claimed the life of our own Action Cameraman  
Stan Ellington."  
"Yes, Paul, that's right," blond and stylish Denise Philips said,  
just before leaning sideways in her chair and puking all over the floor.  
Channel 8 went abruptly to commercial.  
"And they're headed our way?" Mark asked, smoothly taking  
charge. "How many? ETA?"  
"Three," Carol said briskly. "The two from the Mercedes and  
the one from the van. Bystanders are all getting sent over to Midtown,  
so we don't get to meet the politician or the reporter." She checked her  
watch. "Four minutes."  
"We'll need security down here," Mark said in an undertone to  
Jerry. "Okay, get the crash carts ready, and did somebody page O.B.?"  
"Yeah, but they're swamped," Randi reported.  
"Damn it, not again!"  
"Take it easy, Mark," Carol said, putting a hand on his arm.  
"I'll page Doug."  
By the time the paramedics slammed through the doors with a  
gurney between them, they were ready. "What've we got?" Mark  
demanded.  
"Pregnant lady, maybe eight, nine months along. Multiple  
lacerations and assorted bruises, possible fracture of the left arm and  
right leg, probable internal bleeding, but the big concern is the kid.  
Couldn't get a fetal heartbeat."  
"She conscious?"  
"She was when we got there but she was pretty messed up  
mentally. Fought us. The husband did too. He's in the ambulance right  
behind us. They had to trank him."  
"What's her name?"  
"Dominique MacLachlan."  
"Okay. We've got it. Thanks, guys!" Mark bent over the  
woman, noting in passing that she was auburn-haired and of uncommon  
beauty. "Mrs. MacLachlan?"  
No response. He laid his hand upon the solid rounded bulge of  
her belly, hoping to feel movement. Nothing. He frowned and felt  
around a little. "That's weird."  
"What?" Carol hipped open the door to Trauma 1 and they  
rolled on in.  
Mark shook his head, still frowning. "Get me a fetal monitor  
and an ultrasound." He added more orders, backed off and let the nurses  
flow around her like the tide, then hurried next door.  
"On my count!" Carter was saying.  
Mark noticed that both of these paramedics had bruises of their  
own, and one of them spat a tooth even as he watched. The patient was  
a big man, silver-haired but with a build a twenty-five year old might  
have envied.  
"What happened?"  
"Thought we were attacking him or something," the paramedic  
who still had all her teeth said. "Busted my partner a good one."  
"Wendy, take him down to Exam Three and patch up his  
mouth," Mark said.  
"He was out of his mind. No wonder. Some asshole comes  
along and hammers them on their way to Sunday brunch. We shot him  
up with 50 milligrams of tranquiline just to get him on the stretcher."  
"We'll take care of it. Go with Wendy; she'll give you  
something for the pain." Mark made sure Carter had everything in hand,  
which of course he did, and went back to Trauma One. Malik was just  
rolling in the ultrasound, and Carol was scowling at the fetal heartbeat  
monitor.  
"Mark, I'm not getting anything," she said worriedly.  
"Miscarriage?"  
"There's no bleeding."  
He began his examination, and by the time Doug poked his  
head over his shoulder and asked what was up, Mark was genuinely  
puzzled.  
"Doug, take a look at this," he said, gesturing to the ultrasound  
printout.  
"Has anybody from O.B. been down?"  
"No." Mark snorted. "You know how they are. Let us sink or  
swim, and if we sink, haul our collective butts in front of a review board  
for incompetence."  
"You want me to handle it from here?"  
"I got it. But what do you think it is?"  
Doug studied the printout. "Looks like a uterine tumor the size  
of a basketball. Who's her doctor?"  
"Your guess is as good as mine. Carol, run a pregnancy test,  
would you?"  
"Sure, Mark."  
"How's the husband?" he asked the room at large.  
"They're taking him up to the O.R.," Haleh said. "Broken ribs,  
possible punctured lung. A few minor burns and scrapes."  
"What about the other guy?"  
"Maggie's got him," Malik said, dashing in and dashing out  
with a big pair of shears. "Laser to the chest, dislocated jaw, burns, and  
he's got so much metal sticking out of his back he looks like a  
porcupine. He was facing away from that van when it blew. That funny  
jumpsuit, though, it's bullet-resistant, otherwise he'd be dead. We're  
having a hell of a time cutting it off of him."  
"Still no room at the inn up in O.B?"  
Doug barked a short laugh. "They had two ladies who'd been  
on fertility drugs go into labor at the same time. There's about a dozen  
preemies up there."  
"Okay. Let's move her down to Exam Four. Somebody check  
her purse; maybe we can get ahold of her doctor."  
Randi leaned in. "Mark, the cops are here."  
"Oh, great! What do they want?"  
She popped her gum. "Talk to you about the patients. They  
kinda shot up downtown, you know?"  
"On my way. Doug, keep an eye on her?"  
"No problem."  
Mark snapped off his bloody gloves and shucked his plastic  
gown, and went to see the cops.  
* *  
Halfway through his scrub-up, Doctor Hicks came in and  
glowered at him. "What is the meaning of this, Doctor Carter?"  
"What? The man needs surgery. I called up."  
"Surgery. Did you examine him?"  
He bristled a little. "Of course I examined him!"  
She held out a bio-scanner. "Maybe you should take another  
look?"  
Irritated at the accusation in her tone, he flicked water off his  
hands and dried them. He snatched the proffered scanner and went into  
the operating theater, where his patient lay prepped and motionless  
under the clean glow of the lights. With the blood sponged away, and  
the better lighting, he looked much improved. Barely hurt at all.  
Carter ran the scanner over his chest with an I-told-you-so air,  
then faltered. "But --"  
"Next time, I suggest you be a little more thorough."  
"But -- broken ribs! Punctured lung!"  
"Where?" she inquired with polite and grating sweetness.  
"Look!" He grabbed the X-rays and slapped them on the  
lightboard. "There, see?"  
"Are these the right films?"  
"I don't mix up my patients, Doctor Hicks!"  
"Apparently, you have, Carter. This man has nothing wrong  
with him except a few bruises and minor burns."  
"No, that's not right!" Carter pointed. "He had second-degree  
burns over most of this leg."  
Doctor Hicks planted her hands on her hips and looked at him.  
"And I'm supposed to believe they just healed in the elevator on the way  
up?"  
* *  
"Doctor Greene, I'm Detective Bluestone."  
Mark shook the man's hand, noting with amusement that it was  
always only after they'd grabbed it that it occurred to them to wonder if  
it had been wrist-deep in somebody's guts just moments before.  
His amusement vanished as he got a good look at the young  
man's eyes. Large, dark, deep, and soulful, they were the eyes of a much  
older and haunted being, eyes that had seen mysteries and strangeness  
that made the daily grind of the ER dull by comparison.  
"What can I do for you, detective?"  
"I'm here about the accident."  
"That was quick."  
"Doctor Greene, we've got lasers and explosions going off  
downtown, a news crewman dead, two or three other people dead, a  
mayoral candidate shrieking that it's the end times ... we've got to be  
quick."  
"So you're wondering about the guy from the van?"  
Bluestone nodded. Wendy, leaving Exam Three, glanced his  
way and her perpetual cheery smile grew into something warm and real.  
He was a real head-turner, with dark brooding good looks and the type  
of mouth Mark believed was described in the magazines as 'sensual.' He  
dressed in an old-fashioned style, his suit covered by a trenchcoat right  
out of a cops-and-robbers movie. Not only that, but his voice was  
remarkable.  
"My team is still working on him," Mark said. "When his van  
blew up, it shot him full of shrapnel."  
"Did you get a name?"  
"Not that I know of."  
"May I see him?"  
Mark demurred. "It's not a pretty sight."  
"I've seen my share of blood," he said. He fixed Mark's gaze  
with his own. "Take me to him."  
A wave of dizziness swept over him and he heard himself say,  
"Okay. This way."  
  
* *  
"It's an egg," Randi said, dropping a chart in Doug's lap.  
"What are you talking about?"  
She jerked her head toward the unconscious woman. "I read  
about stuff like that all the time. I bet she was one of those women  
abducted and impregnated, you know, by gargoyles. There was a lot of  
that going on thirty years ago, but now the government covers it up."  
"Randi, there's no such thing as gargoyles."  
"So how do you explain the egg? I'm serious! There was a case  
in Texas a few years back, and one in Manhattan --"  
"Next you'll be telling me about little green men." Doug  
shooed her into the hall. "Go answer a phone or something, will you?"  
"You'll see!" she waggled her finger at him. "You'll see!"  
  
* *  
"One more --" Maggie said tensely. "There! Got it!" She  
triumphantly dropped a shard of metal into a pan filled with similar  
ones. "Thirty-eight! Wow! He wouldn't have been going to the airport  
anytime soon!"  
"Malik says you need more gauze." Ronette Williams, newest  
nurse on the staff and still learning her way around, came in timidly  
with a covered tray.  
"Yeah. Guy's going to look like the Mummy by the time we've  
got all this patched up. But he's lucky, he probably won't need surgery.  
Pass me that suture kit, would you? This one went all the way through. I  
want to stitch it up." She got the patient onto his side and swabbed an  
area high on his right shoulder. The suture gun hummed as it revved up.  
Ronette glanced at his face, and gasped. She reached out and  
drew back her hand at the last minute.  
"What? You know him?" Maggie asked.  
"No. No. Never seen him before." Ronette backed up, now  
fingering nervously at her hair.  
Not her hair, Maggie saw. Her ears. Her earrings, to be  
precise. Small, silver, abstract. Looking kind of like a hammer and three  
lightning bolts.  
Exactly like the small blue tattoo on the patient's cheekbone, at  
the corner of his right eye.  
* *  
"... tell me your name?"  
He groaned and opened his eyes. A figure swam into focus, a  
young, handsome man with an earnestly confused puppy-dog  
expression.  
"MacBeth," he said thickly. "No. MacLachlan. Lennox  
MacLachlan."  
"You're in the hospital. Do you know why?"  
Seeing the man's coat and stethoscope, he said, "You're the  
doctor. You tell me." And then recollection came back in an icy flood.  
"Dominique! Where is my wife?!" He lunged upward, his elbow hitting  
the little bedside tray and sending a musical shower of instruments to  
the tiled floor.  
"She's going to be fine. Some of our best doctors are taking  
care of her."  
"No! We have to get out of here!" He swung his legs over the  
side of the bed and then groaned again, wrapping his arms around  
himself.  
"Where's it hurt?" the doctor asked. "Your ribs? Damn! I knew  
that X-ray was right!"  
MacBeth shook his head. "No, not ribs." He gritted his teeth  
until the pain eased, then exhaled. "It's better now. Never mind. Where  
are my clothes?"  
The doctor reached into a white bag and held up a pair of  
pants. The right leg was nothing but char and shreds. "When they  
brought you in, you had sustained some pretty good burns."  
"I'm a quick healer," MacBeth said warily. He'd been in  
similar situations before, but this was surely the worst. Not only was he  
at risk, but his wife and child as well.  
"No kidding! You had broken ribs, internal bleeding, and now  
there's barely a bruise on you. I don't get it. We have some fast-acting  
treatments, but nothing that could do this!"  
"I cannot explain, Doctor ..."  
"Carter."  
"Doctor Carter, I must see my wife. Right now."  
"She's still downstairs in the ER. Mister MacLachlan, I really  
need to ask you some questions --"  
"I don't have time for questions."  
Carter ran his hand through his hair. It fell tousled onto his  
forehead, making him look all of seventeen. MacBeth suddenly felt  
very old. "Look, Mister MacLachlan, my boss is giving me heck for  
running you up to the O.R. without apparent cause. I've got to tell her  
something."  
"Tell her what you like. If I refuse treatment, you cannot keep  
me here. Since there is nothing physically wrong --" he sucked in a  
harsh breath and clenched his fists as the pain came back, deep and  
crushing, unlike anything he'd felt in ten centuries of wounds.  
"_Something_ is wrong," Carter said. "I just don't know what.  
Come on, let me run a few tests."   
* *  
Mark nodded at the security guards who were hanging around  
outside Trauma Three, and they let him and Bluestone pass. On the  
way, they nearly bumped into the new nurse, Ronette, who looked  
preoccupied and upset.  
"Maggie. How's he doing?"  
"Well, he's going to have plenty of scars, and he'll need a few  
grafts, too. But he'll live."  
Bluestone walked around the table, heedless of the blood, and  
took a good look at the patient. "I thought so. Bryce Canmore. At last."  
  
* *  
"What's up, kids?" Haleh asked as she balanced a pile of charts  
on the admissions desk.  
"Well," Jerry said, "Randi says the FBI is here to cover up the  
fact that one of our patients was abducted by aliens."  
"Not aliens, pinhead," Randi corrected. "Gargoyles. Hundred  
bucks says, when they open her up to check that tumor, that it's an egg."  
Ronette reeled back, bumped into Haleh's stack of charts and  
knocked them everywhere. "Gar ..." she breathed. "I -- I've got to get  
these to the lab!"  
Haleh hollered after her to get back and help clear up the mess,  
but Ronette was gone.  
"Now, where does she think she's going?" Jerry wondered.  
"Lab's the other way."  
* *  
Carol came in. "Doug, we got that pregnancy test back. It's --"  
"Positive, right?"  
"Yeah, how'd you know?"  
Doug glanced at his patient. "Because she's just gone into  
labor."  
* *  
"It's not me!" MacBeth said suddenly, startling Carter, who  
had been dutifully examining him and not finding a single thing wrong.  
"Dominique!"  
He shoved the doctor aside and forced himself to rise. The  
pains were coming harder and faster now, and he understood all too  
well what they meant. But he had suffered worse, and his fears now  
were brighter and sharper than any agony.  
"Mister MacLachlan --" Carter put himself between him and  
the door.  
MacBeth shouldered him aside and ran down the hall.  
Orderlies and nurses turned, amused at the spectacle they must have  
presented, him in his papery hospital gown, the young doctor in close  
pursuit.  
He stopped, staring at a completely unhelpful map with a big  
yellow "You Are Here" sticker. Carter caught up, panting. He started to  
say something but it was choked off as MacBeth grabbed a double  
handful of his lab coat and hauled him eye to eye.  
"Take me to my wife."  
"Okay," Carter said, without a moment's hesitation.  
* *  
"Hey, Mark!" Carol skidded around the corner. "Doug needs  
you in Exam Four. She's in labor."  
Detective Bluestone motioned. "Go on, Doctor. Your patient is  
the important thing. My questions can wait."  
"In labor?" Mark asked, following Carol. "But she's not --"  
"Yes, she is. Test came back positive."  
"This is too weird."  
"Getting weirder," Carol said, pointing to the two men coming  
down the stairs. "Isn't he supposed to be in surgery?"  
"Fast work, Carter," Mark commented.  
"I didn't do anything!" Carter protested. His patient uttered a  
low cry and stopped to brace his hands on the wall.  
"What's the matter with him?"  
Carter flung his hands in the air. "Hell if I know!"  
"My wife --" the man gasped.  
"She's going to be fine," Mark assured him. "We're just on our  
way --"  
"Mark, I need you now!" Doug yelled.  
There was a high feline screech, the sound of a catamount  
caught in a leg trap, and then Exam Four was full of flying missiles.  
Through the windows, they could see a woman whose beauty was  
contorted by pain and rage. An I.V. stand smashed through the glass  
upper half of the door, shredding the privacy curtain.  
"Quiet Sunday morning," Mark said to Carol, and alarmed  
himself by yodeling a decidedly looney laugh.  
He slammed through the door and hauled the woman off Doug.  
Despite her condition, she was not the least bit awkward. She writhed in  
his arms like a bagful of snakes and sank her teeth into his shoulder.  
"Trank!" he yelled.  
"Got it!" Carol jerked a drawer open, but the woman's husband  
tore the entire drawer out of the cabinet and flung it out the broken  
door. It hit Carter just above the eyebrows and he dropped in a hail of  
capped syringes and rolled bandages.  
The woman shrieked and fluid gushed down her legs. At the  
same moment, her husband echoed her and bent double.  
"Dominique!" Mark said urgently. "We're trying to help you.  
Let us help you and your baby!"  
"No ..." she said weakly, reaching to clasp her husband's hand.  
"Sundown ..."  
"Is hours away," he finished. "The accident brought your labor  
on too soon. The doctors are our only chance."  
"We can't!"  
"We must," he told her, squeezing. "For the baby."  
"They'll find out!"  
He pushed her sweat-sodden auburn hair back from her pale,  
drawn face. His steely eyes met her emerald ones. "Let them do their  
work, my love. If I have to kill them all to get us out of here afterward, I  
shall. You have my word."  
Mark, Carol, and Doug exchanged a rapid and alarmed glance.  
But the weird conversation and that deadly promise calmed the woman,  
and she let them boost her onto the table just in time for the next  
contraction.  
Seeing that all the fight was out of both of them, and they  
would cooperate (at least until the ominously phrased "afterward"),  
Mark recovered his command.  
Whatever was going down was guaranteed to be the most  
bizarre event of his career, and the less spectators, the better. He had  
Carol shut what was left of the door and pull what was left of the  
curtains, catching one last glimpse of Carter as Malik and Maggie  
dragged his unconscious body away.  
Doug took a quick look at the husband, and reported in an  
undertone. "It's psychosomatic. I've seen similar cases, but nothing this  
severe. He really seems to be feeling her pain."  
* *  
He was.  
Never before in history had a man known just what it was to  
give birth. Now, one man knew, although it seemed impossible. How  
could he be feeling the contractions of muscles, the working of organs,  
that he did not possess?  
Nonetheless, it was happening, and it made the backaches and  
swollen ankles they'd suffered for the past few months seem like a walk  
in the park. Fatal injuries paled in comparison, for those were at least  
over fairly quick, while this went on and on, more deep and intense than  
anything he'd ever known.  
"We might have to go with the C-section," the balding doctor  
was saying. "There's no way she's going to be able to deliver something  
that size."  
The brunette nurse injected Dominique with something, but  
couldn't know the unhappy quirks of their linked lifeforces. _He_ still  
felt everything as vividly, for the drug was not affecting _his_ system.  
Science and sorcery did not, in this case, mix.  
Dominique's hand shot out, clamped down on his arm hard.  
Her eyes blazed red as she roared into his face, "Get away from me, you  
fool!"  
"I won't leave you!"  
"It's okay," the other doctor said. They hadn't seen, or were  
choosing in the madness of the moment to ignore, her eyes. "It's a  
symptom of the stage of labor she's in. Called transition. She doesn't  
really mean it."  
"Yes, I do!" she snarled.  
"It's already engaged in the birth canal. Dominique, don't push!  
Don't push! I'm going to have to turn the ... baby? ... and push it back,  
so we can do a C-section." From the look on the balding doctor's face,  
MacBeth knew that something was terribly wrong. What was he  
encountering as he felt for an infant's skull? A solid, curved surface?  
"It's coming too fast," the dark doctor said. "We're going to  
have to go for it."  
"This is crazy."  
"I'm not arguing with _that_."  
There was a sudden awful cracking sound and Dominique  
howled. So did MacBeth. He fell sideways into a chair, engulfed in a  
white-hot pain so huge that it momentarily blotted out everything else.  
He got over it almost immediately but doubted he would ever forget it.  
"That was her pelvis," the balding one confirmed. "Oh, shit.  
Carol, go get me someone from O.B. _now_, if you have to drag them  
down here!"  
The nurse went on the run, affording them a glimpse of quite a  
crowd gathered in the hall. Held at bay, MacBeth was relieved to note,  
by Bluestone.  
The dark one was keeping his cool. "You'll feel a stretching,  
burning sensation," he explained to Dominique. Under normal  
circumstances, he probably had the most charming bedside manner of  
any doctor in the entire hospital. "Sometimes called the ring of fire.  
When you feel it, I want you to try and wait. Give your body a chance  
to adjust."  
Dominique nodded. Her breath whistled through her teeth.  
Whatever the nurse had given her was helping her, taking the edge off.  
She had done this before, after all, even if it had been a millenium ago.  
MacBeth, on the other hand, hadn't done much more than  
anxiously await the word from the midwife when Gruoch had birthed  
their son so many centuries before. He'd certainly never known what  
she had gone through, all without advanced medicines and physicians!  
It was a wonder humanity had ever survived!  
Fresh fear burst over him as he realized that she could die.  
They both could. For, in a way, hadn't he done this to her? If she died  
bearing his child, hadn't he killed her?  
But, no. No, it couldn't be that way!  
He felt the acidic, unbearable sting of the "ring of fire" in  
tissues that he did not have. All he could do was hiss desperately.  
The two doctors conferred over a needle. "Episiotomy?"  
"Got to."  
"Never going to fit."  
"Better idea?"  
"Not really."  
"Here goes."  
"Wait!" MacBeth said, too late.  
An unseen needle bit cruelly into him, just behind his genitals,  
but it didn't bring the blessed numbing that it evidently brought to his  
wife. And before he could regain the breath to protest, the balding  
doctor picked up a pair of shining-bladed scissors and made a decisive  
snip.  
He'd thought he didn't have any screams left, but he found one  
more.  
* *  
Weird as it was, Doug was getting more worried about the  
husband than the wife.  
Despite the impossible size of the object (which _did_ feel like  
an egg; maybe he owed Randi an apology), Dominique seemed to be  
coping. Still, there was no way that thing was going to come out without  
ripping her in half.  
He looked over at Mark, saw the same truth in his eyes. Truth  
and the awful desperation and frustration they always felt when there  
was nothing they could do. For Mark, this was the worst possible  
scenario. If they lost another mother ...  
"What are we going to do?" he asked, speaking low although  
neither of the others were paying attention.  
Mark shook his head grimly. "I don't know."  
"Doctor?" a musical voice chimed.  
Doug glanced over his shoulder at the nurses, then away. Then  
back again, dipping and craning his neck. "Uh ... Mark?"  
"What?" Mark snapped irritably, then looked and frowned in  
confusion.  
All three nurses, in pale blue scrubs with their hair concealed  
beneath confining caps, were identical. The only difference that Doug's  
quick woman-scanning eye could detect was that their delicately  
feathered eyebrows were of different colors. One pale blond, one  
strawberry blond, one dusky. Their faces (unearthly beautiful) and their  
bodies (hard to tell under the scrubs but damn fine was a good guess)  
were as alike as reflections.  
His first coherent thought had to do with material for a letter to  
Penthouse, his second thought was that the door hadn't opened since  
Carol's exit, and the third was that the room had cooled and dimmed.  
"May we assist?" they asked.  
Dominique and her husband reacted as if splashed with cold  
water. "The Weird Sisters!" she gasped.  
"Who are you people?" Mark demanded.  
"Let them help!" the husband said urgently. He turned his  
attention to the women. "You can, can't you?"  
"Do you want our help?" one asked teasingly.  
"If you've come to help, then do it!" He raised a menacing fist  
toward them. "But if you've come to take our child --"  
The three rolled their eyes in amusement. "We have no need to  
take your child. He, and you, will come to us in due time and of your  
own accord. But yes, MacBeth son of Findleigh, we have come to help.  
For did we not author his conception? Is he not, in a way, as much our  
child as yours?"  
"What the hell is going on here?" Mark tried again.  
Doug caught him by the elbow and drew him out of the way,  
somehow understanding that they were temporarily rendered part of the  
background by this inexplicable drama.  
Dominique's entire body shuddered. Her husband, MacBeth,  
seemed to coil in upon himself, wrapping around the pain, suffering it  
every bit as much or even more than she did.  
"We are nearly too late, sisters," the dusky one said. "Had the  
singer not summoned us, we might have missed this event."  
She extended her slim hands to the other two, and they linked.  
The caps fell from their heads, letting gorgeous hair in three different  
shades spill loose down the backs of their scrubs. A pearly glow shone  
and shifted behind them.  
"Moon take path 'twixt sun and earth, bring midday night to  
aid this birth!"  
A sense of pressure built in the small, crowded exam room.  
From the hall, they could all hear sudden startled cries and the rapid  
thump of many footfalls. Something was going on, they couldn't see  
what, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the delivery.  
Until Dominique uttered an inhuman triumphant screech, and  
began to change.  
Doug wasn't aware of moving but realized that his back was  
now pressed firmly against the wall, and Mark was standing next to him  
with his eyes bulging behind the archaic specs he favored. Neither of  
them could look away from the bizarre transformation.  
Within seconds, a blue-skinned creature was crouching on the  
bed, claws gouging the mattress, wings extended.  
"Definetely owe Randi an apology," Doug heard his mouth  
say.  
  
* *  
Here, at least, was a pain they were both used to. And in its  
wake, it brought relief from everything else.  
Demona clutched MacBeth's hands and bore down, shaking  
from the effort. This wasn't her first egg, and was small by gargoyle  
standards, so it began emerging almost at once.  
The Weird Sisters smiled beatifically, wreathed in light. The  
two mortals huddled gawking in the corner; she paid them little mind.  
Her attention was on the egg.  
It came wide-end first, so that once the thickest part was  
through it slid easily free and rolled gently onto the bed.  
"There!" she sighed, and slumped down next to it. MacBeth  
was at her side, stroking her hair, telling her that he loved her.  
"The eclipse is nearly at an end," the dark sister said. "And so  
is our time here. Tend well your son, and we will return when you are  
needed." With that, all three of them vanished.  
The doctors didn't move. Demona, who had undergone more  
of a change of heart in the past two years than in the five centuries  
prior, actually felt sorry for them.  
"Look," MacBeth said in a tone full of wonder.  
The egg, blue-tinted ivory with darker mottlings, was rocking  
gently. A thin crack appeared, and then another. A section bulged  
outward.  
MacBeth pried up the bit of shell. A thick fluid trickled out.  
And then, a tiny hand pressed against the bluish membrane, five fingers  
clearly visible. The egg rocked again, more violently, and broke apart  
right down the middle.  
A loud, lusty squall filled the room.  
"My God," the dark-haired doctor said, coming forward.  
Demona ... no, Dominique now, she had reverted to human  
without even noticing, so entranced had she been ... Dominique picked  
up her son.  
He was red, wrinkled, annoyed, and the most beautiful thing  
she had ever seen. She'd missed the hatching of the rookery children,  
but even then it wouldn't have been like this. All of the gargoyle  
hatchlings would have belonged to the entire clan, but this, this fist-  
waving noisy human, was _hers_.  
"Our son." MacBeth embraced her as she cradled the infant,  
then reached to stroke the fuzzy cap of brownish hair.  
"We'll call him Moray," she said, bringing tears to MacBeth's  
eyes.  
"Moray," he agreed.  
"I make him nine pounds, give or take a few ounces," the dark-  
haired doctor remarked. "But no umbilical cord ... kid's not going to  
have a bellybutton. May I --"  
Dominique held her son protectively close while her husband,  
no longer incapacitated by their shared pain, turned and stood to his full  
impressive height. His steely gaze swept both doctors, and she knew  
that they were remembering his earlier promise to kill them.  
Distantly, but very clearly, the sound of singing drifted on the  
air.  
"We won't be staying," MacBeth said. "And it is of vital  
importance that no one else learn our secret."  
There was a lengthy pause, and then the dark haired one  
scratched fitfully at the back of his neck and shrugged. "Secret? I'm just  
glad you're not angry about that problem with the ultrasound. Got to get  
that thing fixed. It's always fouling up."  
The other one deposited the eggshell in a large bag marked  
"Biohazard -- For Incineration Only." As he did so, he added, "Sorry  
about all the confusion. Things aren't usually this hectic."  
"Yeah," the dark one said, "it'd be amazing if we got any of  
our charts finished."  
Dominique and MacBeth studied them, then each other.  
"We brought a new life into the world today," MacBeth said.  
"It would be a shame to take any others."  
* *  
Maggie Doyle glared daggers above the thick pad of gauze  
taped over her mouth.  
"She'll tell," Ronette said.  
"It doesn't matter." Bryce Canmore, wincing and moving  
gingerly, peered into the hallway.  
The security guards were still distracted. Everyone out there  
was babbling about the eclipse. Some doctor, apparently an amateur  
astronomer, was loudly discoursing on how the phase of the moon was  
all wrong, that it was impossible.  
Only he knew the truth. There was a sign in the heavens, and  
the beast was loosed upon the earth. The Demon had spawned. It was  
the beginning of the end.  
He had failed in his mission.  
If he had died in the slaying of the Demon, it would have been  
a legacy well-spent. Now, though, he could not take the chance. Now he  
had to be able to assure the destruction of both mother and child. If he  
killed the Demon, but perished himself, her child would carry on the  
evil.  
"I'm going to get in trouble," the young woman fretted.  
She wore the sacred sign, proof that her family was loyal to the  
cause, but she remained largely ignorant of the quest. Still, she was an  
attractive thing, and it was high time he did something about securing  
his future.  
"Maybe even lose my job," she continued.  
The other nodded viciously, struggling against her bonds.  
"It doesn't matter," Bryce said again. "You're coming with  
me."  
She looked up at him, hopeful and dazzled. "Really?"  
"Of course. You have a greater purpose to fulfill." He put on  
the blue scrubs she'd brought him, and tied a cotton mask to hide half of  
his face.  
"What purpose?"  
He touched her cheek. "There will always be a Hunter."  
* *  
He was waiting on the roof when they emerged.  
The sky had gone back to normal, with no sign of the moon to  
be seen. The painted concrete of the helipad was bright as a desert  
under the afternoon sun.  
"Hello, Canmore."  
Ronette gasped.  
The last Hunter and prophet of the Quarrymen turned slowly.  
"Bluestone. So you've caught up with me at last. Come to kill me, the  
way my father killed yours?"  
"No. I've learned the lesson your family never did. Generations  
of revenge have brought you nothing but death. I won't fall into that  
trap."  
"So what are you going to do?" Canmore sneered.  
He opened his coat, withdrew something of metal that was not  
a gun, and set his fingers to the strings. "I've had a busy day, but I've  
saved my best for you."  
Then, with all the power that was his, Orpheus Bluestone  
began to sing.  
* *  
The End. 


End file.
